Student Blog : Mia Trew details her experiences
at the Centre for Fine Woodworking.
Newsletters
THE CENTRE FOR FINE WOODWORKING
NNEWSLETTER – NOVEMBER 2009
Welcome to the November Newsletter from the Centre for Fine Woodworking.
Hello again from us all here at the Centre for Fine Woodworking. We thought we would just keep you up to date with what's happening here over the next few months – we are busy getting ready for our trade stand at the Royal Canterbury Show next week, so if you are going to be there then please come and see us in the Trade & Features Pavilion – we are stand 81.
We are drawing to the end of the 2009 Full Time Furniture Making Course and the gallery space at the front of the office is displaying some stunning examples of student work. With the few weeks that are left the students are finishing off pieces for our annual exhibition which will be held at Refinery Artspace here in Nelson from 11th December 2009 - 24th January 2010. Due to the large numbers of visitors we had to the exhibition last year, Refinery Artspace asked us to exhibit for a longer period of time, which works in very well for us because when this exhibition draws to a close, we are off out of the provinces and into the big city! We are thrilled to be able to exhibit over 60 pieces of furniture from current and previous students and selected pieces from our tutors. This major exhibition will be at the Centre for Contemporary Art (COCA) in Gloucester Street, Christchurch from 10th February - 6th March 2010.
If you are still deciding about enrolling in any courses next year it would be helpful to hear from you – even if we just pencil you in as a possibility – contact Helen on cfwoodwork@gmail.com if you have any questions or want to discuss course availability. Following numerous requests and what we see as a positive development we are currently reorganising the workshops space in order to have four bench spaces available for availability to non students. This would be non-tutor contact access to the workshop and machine room for an agreed amount of time. If this idea appeals to you then get in touch with John for further discussions.
We are enjoying having Richard Ash as a new tutor here -he is settling in well and has been working a day or two a week during the Internship Programme. We are currently trying to encourage him to create a piece of furniture for our forthcoming exhibitions.
One of our full time students, Glen left a few weeks early from the end of the full time course, so to celebrate his time here with us he threw a wonderful dinner party. We were all led to believe we were having a five course dinner cooked for us, which was true in a way but what we didn't realise was that we were selected into small groups, forced to dress up as kitchen staff, and to then go off and create each course. It was a hilarious evening – as you can imagine the people who got selected towards the end of the meal had drunk far too many glasses of wine and it all got a bit hectic in the kitchen (John and Helen on course number 4 in the picture below as a good example). John and David were forced to demonstrate complicated woodworking techniques with Glen's 2 year old son's toy workbench and tools which as you can imagine was very entertaining. Thanks to Glen & Marion for a very memorable evening.
We are very proud of our full time students who exhibited at the recent Kawerau Woodskills Festival – with Adam Webb winning 1st and 2nd prize in the furniture section and Tony Clark winning 3rd prize in the same category. All of our student work was highly commended by the judges - here is a photo of Adam's winning piece:
UPDATE ON JAPAN TRIP – REPORT FROM LARRY
John Shaw, Marc Zuckerman, my wife Pat and I set off to Japan on the first of October. In this report I will stick to brief descriptions of our visits to various woodworkers during our first week in Japan. I will leave out most references to tools and tool shops, food and cultural experiences for later Newsletters.
We started off the woodworking aspect of the trip by attending the Traditional Arts Exhibition in Tokyo where we met again with Suda-san, who proudly showed us his entry in the exhibition named "Southern Cross" which he started when he visited us last April. The interior structures were of Matai which Dave Haig had presented to him. There were hundreds of other items, woodwork, bamboo, lacquer, pottery, glass and kimono also on display. There was a large crown in attendance.
While at the exhibition we ran into former CFW student Nigel McCarter who now lives in Tokyo.
Later we visited Suda-san's brother-in-law, the priest at a local Buddhist temple. After tea, we were given a service wherein each of us individually, and the Centre for Fine Woodworking collectively were blessed. I know I said I wasn't going to cover cultural experiences in this report, but this one was too good to leave until later!
We returned to the Traditional Arts Exhibition the next day and went from there to another exhibition, this one by students of Shuko-kai, a weekend woodworking school run for those with weekday commitments in Tokyo. There we also met up with Itsuki Hagiwara who has now returned to Japan from NZ.
The following day we met Nagao-san on a Shinkansen (bullet train) platform and traveled together to Gunma where Suda-san lives. We got to inspect several pieces of his work, as well as examples of both his father's and grandfather's woodwork. We saw Suda's workshop. He has an impressive array of tools and gadgets. John presented him with a Krenov-style plane and a reconditioned Stanley with a Hock iron.
Next we went to Iwatsuki in Sendai prefecture to visit Hinoki Kogei, furniture makers for the Imperial Palace, as well as many other customers. Hinoki Kogei is run by a father-and-son team named Tozawa. They have 29 employees engaged in restoration of the Imperial Mercedes, developing manufacturing techniques for independent designers, and building furniture of their own design.
We flew to Hokkaido and met with Santaro Takahashi, a chair maker in Sapporo. We went on to Asahikawa where under the guidance of Tanno-san, basically a small-goods maker, we also met several others woodworkers and visited a showroom which displays the work of maybe 50 different furniture designers based in and around Asahikawa.
Stay tuned for stories of more exhibitions and more meetings with woodworkers in Tokyo and Uji, the tales of Tsukiji, the big fish market in Tokyo, our tangle with the edge of a typhoon, comparisons of noisy Tokyo to serene Nagoya, crowds, high-speed train travel, lingering dinners, somber Hiroshima, tools and tool shopping, etc.
Pictures! Do we have pictures!
Hope to see you at one of our events over the next few months
Best wishes from us all here
John, Larry, Dave, Richard, Helen & Co
Previous Newsletters
September 2009 Newsletter web page
July 2009 Newsletter web page
April 2009 Newsletter web page
January 2009 Newsletter 8.6kb .html document
November 2008 Newsletter 1.4Mb .pdf document
September 2008 Newsletter 272kb .pdf document
August 2008 Newsletter 220kb .pdf document
June 2008 Newsletter 118kb .pdf document
May 2008 Newsletter 260kb .pdf document
March 2008 Newsletter 1.24Mb .pdf document
January 2008 Newsletter 93Kb .pdf document
Centre for Fine Woodworking
PO Box 1452
Nelson, New Zealand
e-mail: info@cfw.co.nz
phone: +64 3 545 2674
